people was thus created that fostered the cultural traditions of their
country in the language of England.
Part VII
In the meantime, in an age where radio and movies began to play important
roles in the regular everyday life of the people of Wales, the language
continued its precipitous decline. North Wales got its news from and
followed the events in Liverpool; South Wales was more tied to happenings
in Bristol or even London. Links between the two areas of Wales were
practically non-existent; roads and rails went West to East, not North to
South, and the flow of ideas and language went in the same directions. Any
sense of a national Welsh identity was disappearing rapidly along with the
language.
In an attempt to stop the rot, a new party came into being in 1925, Plaid
Genedlaethol Cymru (The National Party of Wales) that was fiercely devoted
to purely Welsh causes such as preservation of the language and culture. In
1926, Saunders Lewis took over the presidency, but the party received very
little general support and, in some areas of Wales, was the object of
ridicule. It was to take forty years before Plaid Cymru was taken seriously
and gained its first seat in Parliament. Much had been happening until then
to further erode Welsh as a common language and the idea of the Welsh as a
common, united people worthy of their own government as part of a greater
Britain.
The views of Henderson and Lewis, as imaginative and forward-looking as
they were, did not appeal to the majority of the Welsh people' at the time,
those who thought the politician and the poet were those of a very small
minority indeed. In the meantime, the process of anglicization continued
unabated; more people living in Wales considered themselves Anglo-Welsh
than Welsh. Much of the blame (or for some,the praise), can be placed on
the educational system that, even before the outset of the Second World War
was geared to producing loyal Britons.
When World War ll finally arrived, there was much more unanimity of support
throughout Britain than there had been for the First World War. And there
was less trauma inflicted upon the people of Wales, for this was a crusade
against Fascism and Nazism and Hitler that almost everyone could subscribe
to. It was also a fight to preserve the Empire. The heavy bombing meant a
large exodus of children from the targeted larger English cities into the
more rural areas. In Wales, thousands of refugees learned Welsh, but in
many areas their English language overwhelmed the local speech.or tipped
the scales against its survival.
To counter the linguistic threat to the Welsh culture at Aberystwyth, a
private Welsh-medium school was established.by Ifan ab Owen Edwards, the
son of the famous educator. Apart from this little school, however, it
wasn't until Llanelli Welsh School began in 1947 that the idea of teaching
children through the medium of Welsh began to take hold in earnest. Other
schools followed, so that by 1970, even Cardiff had its Ysgol Dewi Sant
(St. David's School) one of the largest primary schools in Wales, teaching
through the medium of Welsh. The increase in the Welsh primary schools was
accompanied by a demand for a Welsh secondary education, and the first such
schools opened in Flintshire, Ysgol Gyfun Glan Clwyd and Ysgol Maes Garmon
in areas in which the great majority of the parents were monolingual
English. The success of these schools were followed by Ysgol Rhydfelen in
Glamorganshire in 1962 and by many others by the 1980's.
It may have taken a long while, and for many, it might have been too late,
but the change in the attitude of the Welsh people toward their language
has been dramatic since 1962. Not only that, but great strides have been
made in convincing immigrants to Wales that their children would not suffer
the loss of their English language if they were to be taught through the
medium of Welsh, and that a bilingual education may well be superior to one
that confines them to a single language. Many a non-Welsh speaking parent
is now anxious to point with pride at the achievement of their children in
the Welsh language. It is no longer fashionable in Wales to refer to the
language as "dying," and the activities of the Eisteddfod as "the kicks of
a dying nation," sentiments the author heard at Swansea in 1964. What
caused the sea-change?
One place we can start to look for the answer is the media, especially
public radio. Beginning in 1922, the BBC broadcasts in Wales were eagerly
awaited. Its voice, however, was one that gave prestige and authority to
its views, the voice of a public-school-educated upper-class Englishman. In
addition, the majority of broadcasts led a majority of British people to
believe that a BBC accent was not only desirable, but was the correct one,
and that their own accent, dialect, or in the case of much of Wales, their
language, was inferior. It was Radio Eireann, the voice of the Irish
Republic, that broadcast the only regular Welsh language material,
beginning in 1927.
At time, and for a long period afterward, incredible as it now seems, the
head of the BBC station in Cardiff ignored protests from devotees of the
Welsh language who wished to hear Welsh language programs. There were then
almost one million speakers of Welsh. But aided by such attitudes of those
in authority, a rapid decline was about to begin. This was not inevitable.
Perhaps the language would have even advanced, given sufficient air time in
the late 1920's and early 30's. The problem was that most Welsh listeners
enjoyed their English language programs; it was only the few who realized
that their enjoyment was coming at the expense of their cherished, native
tongue.
Part VIII
One who did take notice, and one who provided the second place to look for
the answer was Ifan ab Owen Edwards, whose father Owen M. Edwards had
founded Urdd y Delyn in 1898. The son, in his turn, established the most
influential of all youth movements in Wales, Urdd Gobaith Cymru in 1922;
the movement has involved countless thousands of Welsh boys and girls ever
since, conducting their camps, sports activities, singing festivals,
eisteddfodau, etc. all through the medium of Welsh and proving that the
language was not one that should be confined to an older, chapel-going,
puritanical generation. Continued protests against the policies of the BBC,
unable and in most cases unwilling to cater to the new, younger generation
eventually led to the BBC studio at Bangor broadcasting Welsh language
programs. In 1935, and in July of 1937 the Welsh Region of the BBC finally
began to broadcast on a separate wavelength. Radio Cymru, however, had to
wait until 1977.
Another pivotal figure in the fight for survival of the Welsh language, and
one who made good use of the power of the radio broadcast was the poet and
dramatist Saunders Lewis. Like Ifan ab Owen Edwards, Lewis was greatly
concerned that, unless something was done, and done quickly, the Welsh
language as a living entity would disappear before the end of the century.
Lewis, a major Welsh poet and dramatist, generally considered as the
greatest literary figure in the Welsh language of this century, was born in
Cheshire into a Welsh family; he later became a lecturer at the newly
established University College, Swansea. Heavily influenced by events in
Ireland and the struggle for national identity in that country that took
place in the political sphere, he was one of the founders of Plaid Cymru in
1925 at the Pwllheli National Eisteddfod, becoming its president in 1926.
Lewis envisioned a new role for the people of Wales that would transform
their position as a member of the British Empire into one in which they
could see themselves as one of the nations that helped found European
civilization. As he viewed it:
What then is our nationalism?...To fight not for Welsh independence but
for the civilization of Wales. To claim for Wales not independence but
freedom. (Egwyddorion Cenedlaetholdeb, 1926)
Ten years later, with two companions, D.J. Williams and Lewis Valentine,
Lewis deliberately set a fire at Penyberth in the Llyn Peninsular, North
Wales, a site that the military wished to use for construction of a bombing
school. The three then turned themselves in to the authorities and were
duly indicted and summoned to appear in court. The failure of the court to
agree on a verdict at Caernarfon, a town sympathetic to their cause, meant
the removal of their trial to London, where they were each sentenced to
nine months imprisonment. Lewis was dismissed from his teaching post at
Swansea even before the arrival of the guilty verdict at the Old Bailey.
Leading Welsh historians agree that The fire at Penyberth should be
regarded as a cause celebre in the struggle for Welsh identity; it
certainly had its impact on Welsh thinking, an impact that was not wholly
dampened by the onset of Word War ll which again focused the people of
Britain on their shared identity in the face of an enemy that threatened
their survival as a nation. The pacificism of Lewis was an affront to many,
even within Plaid Cymru who saw the need to defeat as overriding any other
concern.
Part IX
The improvements in the road system meant that many areas in Wales were
easy to get to. Their beauty and tranquility became an irresistible magnet
to thousands ready to retire from the squalor and overcrowding of the big
